Microsoft’s Outlook app for Android is about to leave some users in the dust. Starting May 23, 2022, Android 8.0 will replace Android 7.0 as the minimum supported version of the mobile OS for installing Microsoft’s email client.
“If users in your organization are using Outlook for Android on phones running an older version of Android, they will no longer be able to update to newer versions of Outlook for Android when this change is implemented,” the company explained on the Microsoft 365 Admin Center yesterday.
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Even though Android 8.0 was released almost five years ago, there are still many users running older versions of the mobile OS. According to Google’s latest official Android version distribution numbers shared by Android Police in November, 17.3% of Android users were still running Android 7.1 or older.
The Android fragmentation problem isn’t exactly something new, but the Outlook team is actually being quite generous with Android users: In comparison, Outlook for iOS requires iOS 14 as the minimum, and this version was only released in Fall 2020.
Outlook for Android and iOS are pretty solid email mobile clients, though Google’s Gmail Android app also supports multiple email accounts just fine. Anyway, if you’re still using a phone running Android 7.0 or older, you should probably think about upgrading to a newer and more secure device.
dftf
<p>Mostly just to save extra effort testing on, and coding workarounds for, older <em>Android </em>versions that fewer-and-fewer people will be using. (I’d imagine many companies might not even own any old handsets or tablets now running archaic versions of <em>Android</em> they could do real-world testing on!)</p><p><br></p><p>According to StatCounter, as of this January, <em>Android</em> devices worldwide were running the following:</p><p>Android 12 (Snow Cone): 4%</p><p>Android 11 (Red Velvet Cake): 37.6%</p><p>Android 10 ("Q") : 25.5%</p><p>Android 9 (Pie): 12.6%</p><p>Android 8 (Oreo): 9.4%</p><p>Android 7 (Nougat): 4.7%</p><p>Android 6 (Marshmallow): 3%</p><p>Android 5 (Lollipop): 1.9%</p><p><br></p><p>So that’s just-over 89% on one of the most-recent five versions.</p>
dftf
<p>Looking at the latest versions other apps, the cut-off points do seem to vary.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Web browsers: </strong><em>Marshmallow</em><strong> </strong>(6.0) is the minimum most now support: <em>Brave, Google Chrome, Opera</em> and <em>Vivaldi</em> all require it as their minimum (most-likely because that is the minimum OS <em>Google’s</em> "WebView" now runs on), though the latest <em>Firefox</em> still runs on the previous <em>Lollipop</em> (5.0).</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Media apps:</strong> <em>YouTube</em> also requires <em>Marshmallow</em>, but <em>Lollipop</em> remains the lowest you can go for the various UK media apps, such as <em>BBC iPlayer, ITV Hub, All4 </em>and <em>My5</em>.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Social media: </strong><em>Facebook</em> wants Marshmallow minimum, but the "Lite" version will support from <em>Ice Cream Sandwich</em> (4.0.4) upwards. <em>Snapchat </em>wants <em>KitKat</em> (4.4) minimum. Instagram wants <em>Lollipop </em>minimum, but the "Lite" variant supports <em>ICS</em> onwards. <em>Jelly Bean </em>(4.1)<em> </em>is the minimum for <em>WhatsApp</em>.</p><p><br></p><p>The latest release of <strong><em>Outlook</em></strong> (v4.2204.2) currently requires Android 7 or later; v4.2122.2 (25 Jun 2021) was the last that worked on Android 6.0, and v4.2120.2 (5 Jun 2021) was the last for Lollipop.</p><p><br></p><p>(I wonder how this situation compared on the <em>iOS</em> side — do app updates just stop once <em>Apple</em> stops supporting a version of <em>iOS</em> or not? Or if you stick on an older <em>iOS</em>, do you still get app updates?)</p>